Meadow yellow

Thursday, 22 December 2011

After the recent cold snap, the weather returned this week
to a mild theme and encouraged me out into the garden. As I climbed the steps
to the upper garden, my ‘peripherals’ caught a movement in our well. The well
sits in a cobbled courtyard and appears to be fed by local groundwater, and with over a foot of rain in recent weeks
has got very full. Since we moved into our new home this summer I have
frequently peered into the dark depths of the well, never expecting and never
seeing any obvious life in the crystal clear water. I was therefore curious
about the water movement – had an animal fallen in and was struggling to get
free? At first glance I could not see anything, but as my eyes grew accustomed
to the grey gloom I noticed a fishy tail poking out from the side wall. After a
few minutes the tail moved gently and a head appeared, followed by the long
slender body of an unmistakeable Eel
(Anguilla anguilla), at least one and
a half feet long (see images – not an easy photograph to take). Gracefully it
swam around the well, appearing to search for an escape from its surprise
prison until it disappeared through a fissure, not to be seen again and to
where underground I can only puzzle.

The questions this observation poses are as deep and dark as
the well. This mysterious fish will have started its incredible life far away
in the Sargasso Sea (van
Ginneken & Maes, 2006). This is “the earth's only sea without a land
boundary”, defined instead by biological characteristics and oceanic conditions
to determine its location and extent within the North Atlantic sub-tropical
“gyre”, and so named after the abundant presence of Sargassum, a “brown drift
algae” (Sargasso Sea Alliance, 2011). It is within this unique ecosystem that
the young eel larvae feed, develop and drift using the inherent currents, such
as the Gulf Stream to migrate the huge distances to freshwater European and
North African rivers. Unusually for fish they can travel over land if
necessary, and perhaps it is this ability to move out of the confines of purely
aquatic environments enabled it to find its way via groundwater channels into
our well. Living for up to 30 years, you can only wonder at the adventures such
a creature can have, but I am glad that one of them resulted in it appearing in
our garden well - I can only hope that it is able to fulfil its destiny and
return eventually to breed in the Sargasso Sea and bring its life full circle.

Friday, 2 December 2011

When I lived in Nottinghamshire and botanised with my friend
Mary, one of the plants that gave her a lot of pleasure was the Spindle (Euonymus europaeus). She proudly showed
me the last remnant specimens along a stretch of a local hedge. It is an easy
to miss shrub amongst Hawthorn, Blackthorn and other hedgerow plants. Its
innocuous greenish-white flowers do little to make it stand out in the spring.
It does however have an interesting and chequered history – Due to it being the
winter host for two important crop pests, particularly the
black bean aphid (Aphis fabae) which
feeds on field beans and sugar beet, it led in the past to widespread removal from
hedgerows and woodlands (Thomas. et al.,
2011). I guess this explains some of its fragmented occurrence in Britain
depending on how zealous and relevant this pest hosting was to local farmers.
It did have some historic economic importance due to the wood being very
hard, enabling it to be cut to a very sharp point and used in the making of
spindles for spinning wool - Any guesses as to how it got its name!

Roll forward to Devon, our new home, and lazy summer
strolling along local lanes. There in the hedge appeared many four lobed
coral-pink fruits, sculptured almost unnaturally like trendy buttons or sweets (see image above).
These are the charmingly characteristic products of the Spindle, no longer
blending into the background but colourfully and querkily brought forward. As
summer has merged into autumn, and flowers and leaves have eventually withdrawn
from hedgerows, these spectacular fruits have come further into prominence,
advertising a more abundant presence than I had realised. They are now fading
as we approach winter, but not without a final flourish of secondary colour and
confectionary mimicry, as they expose bright orange sheathed seeds (see image below). In the next
week or so the Spindles will have retreated back to being that highly anonymous
shrub.

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About Me

As a child I was happiest searching for toads, grubbing for stag beetle larvae, or installing nest boxes & hides to observe behaviour. At Bath University I studied Biology, specialising in Ecology and for my dissertation studied the foraging habits of the Dipper. After 10 years in the pharmaceutical industry I left in 1996 to join a sustainability experiment in Nottinghamshire, the Hockerton Housing Project. We contributed to building zero carbon earth-sheltered homes with autonomous energy & water systems. I led the development of an on site sustainable business that included tours, educational services, consultancy and publications. We also developed habitats to promote biodiversity, in particular ponds, woodland and hedgerows. I monitored birds (including an Osprey) and assisted the local university studying water voles and shrews. We left HHP in January 2009 in part to go back to my ecological roots, and start an MSc in ‘Biological Recording’. Recently we have moved to Devon, in part for the richer more stimulating landscape and biodiversity. Devon had always appealed to me with its mix of extensive coastline, moors and rivers.